Results

From the first minute, Andrew Bujalski's new comedy Results nudges the viewer into thinking of two other, outwardly similar films: the production company is called Burn Later, which brings to mind Joel and Ethan Coen's gym-set Burn After Reading; and the screen-height title scrolls imperiously leftward in the same font as John G. Avildsen's Rocky, which also featured a schlubby outsider who starts working out in order to go the distance, sort of. And though Rocky gets name-checked in dialogue, Results is an entirely different beast than either of those films. Wealthy sad-sack Danny (Kevin Corrigan, looking as much like Mark Ruffalo these days as it's possible to look without actually being Mark Ruffalo) joins a gym run by the very Australian Trevor (Guy Pearce), and is taken on by personal trainer Kat (Cobie Smulders, who continues to be the best), whom Danny starts to take a liking to in his own weird but mostly harmless way. Results is far less formalistic than Bujalski's previous film Computer Chess, but while it has the trappings of a mainstream rom-com, it largely refuses to follow that template. It's not a spoiler to say the closing credits contain this all-caps message: FEAR EXCUSES SURRENDER(?), complete with the parenthetical question mark. But your own results may vary.